HTML TagWriter 2.1
By Alexander Thomas
alexander.thomas@student.kuleuven.ac.be
web-site: http://urc1.cc.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9608615
TagWriter-site: http://urc1.cc.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9608615/tagwriter/
Question
If you know how to program a XFCN or XCMD for use in HyperCard, read on. If you don't but know somebody who can, please pass this document to him/her!
HyperCard has a very powerful programming language, but has a very big disadvantage: it's sloooowww! You will notice this when opening large files in TagWriter while removing the linefeeds, and even more when converting large text files to HTML. I already tried to optimize the scripts as much as possible, but even at maximum speed they're still slow.
The best solution to this, would be to re-program the "text-crunching" scripts in a XFCN. One won't even notice that his files are converted while opening them! The only problem is: my current knowledge of C is far too low to program a XFCN, and programming the functions themselves will be hard too.
I know that XFCNs are one of the harder things to program, but maybe someone of you finds this piece of cake. If you do and would like to convert these few scripts into decent XFCNs, please contact me!
The only conditions: they must be stable, that is: they must work on all Mac models without crashing; they must be small (but I suppose that's no problem), they must do what they must do, and you cannot (moral obligation?) ask astronomical prices for them, although I will be eager to reward you for your efforts. In addition, you automatically become a registered user of all my creations.
I need XFCNs for the following things, which are currently done by (slow) HyperTalk scripts:
-remove linefeed characters and replace them with carriage returns if necessary
-the inverse: add linefeed characters where necessary or replace carriage returns with linefeeds
-convert special characters like é, à, ü... into character codes (é,...)
-the inverse: remove all HTML tags, convert <br> tags into returns and convert character codes back to plain text (Don't worry about these codes, I have a complete list of them)
-convert WWW-forms to plain text
That's it. As you can see, all of these things are quite simple conversion scripts. But because all of these involve repetitive algorithms, they take lots of time to execute in HyperTalk.
What I also need, is a special "offset" XFCN, just like HC's "offset" function, but case sensitive. I'm surprised that I can't find this in any of the external collections, while it must be one of the simplest things to program.
So if you think "Wow, I can program that" or if you even already have some of the appropriate XFCNs, contact me!
I will give you all the information, like what the XFCNs must do exactly and what they must not do, and the original HyperTalk source (you'll understand it even if you don't know HyperTalk, it's almost plain English).
On the other hand, if you don't feel like programming those functions, but you know a good system or shell to make XFCNs without all the fuss involved, contact me too, please!
You can contact me at: alexander.thomas@student.kuleuven.ac.be
Maybe in a few months I'll be able to do the stuff myself (when I have some more C experience), so if you read this after June 30, 1998, forget about it but thanks for reading this anyway.
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